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Human Shields for Ministers' Reputations

Posted: 19/09/2012 08:59

Something was certain to blow.

It's been seven days of hot churning emotion that led to my expulsion from the Commons for the first time in 25 years.

Last Thursday, Minister Justine Greening demeaned and insulted the Commons with a saccharine flavoured quarterly report on Afghanistan. It was stuffed the culpable self-deluding optimism that has led to the deaths of hundreds of our soldiers. Justine sweetly looked forward to a happy-ever-after corruption and drugs-free Afghanistan.

Green on blues attacks? ...Sorted. Rampaging corruption? ...No worry. Mass exit of the troops of our allies? ...Never heard of it.

On Sunday I attended the Merchant Navy memorial service. One in four of them died in the WW11 - a higher proportion than any other service. Admiral Lord West was there. No Government Minister or royalty turned up. Ingrates.

By Monday three more British soldiers had been killed. Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond was dragged to the House by a backbencher's urgent question. He patronised and postured. He would never fall for the Taliban's trick of trying to divide ISAF from Afghan trainee soldiers. Not our Philip. John Redwood and I urged him to bring our troops home by Christmas. The Dutch and Canadians have already pulled out of the mission impossible. France and New Zealand are leaving earlier than planned.

Hammond offered a despicable justification for more war. 'Four hundred and thirty British service personnel have given their lives, and we intend to protect that legacy by ensuring that the UK's national security interests are protected in future by training and mentoring the Afghan national security forces.'

To justify the waste of 430 lives by foolish politicians, more lives should be lost. Since the expulsion of Al Quaeda they has been no threat to British Security from Afghanistan. The Taliban attack us because we are occupying their county not because they plan terrorism on the streets of the UK.

Later Monday afternoon I began to read the list of the fallen in Afghanistan. 25 of my Early Day Motions have filled 13 pages of the Common motions paper for the past two weeks. I previously sought an arrangement for the full lists to read in the Commons. The Speaker courteously stopped me. "Mr. Flynn raised with me his view that there should be a formal oral recording, periodically, of lives lost, and asked me to look into the matter. I said that I would, and I am doing so, and I think it wise to proceed on the basis of consultation. I intend to speak very soon to the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House and various others about the matter, and then to revert to the hon. Gentleman." I was delighted with that assurance and ending the reading.

Tuesday dawned with the news that ISAF had fallen for the Taliban trick that Hammond said he would never fool him. Humiliated, he was dragged back again to the Commons.

I asked: "The role of our brave soldiers is to act as human shields for Ministers' reputations. The danger to our soldiers has been prolonged by those on the Front Bench who have the power to stop it. Other countries have removed their soldiers and are not doing, what we are doing, is arming and training our future enemy. Is this not similar to the end of the First World War, when it was said that politicians lied and soldiers died, and the reality was, as it is now, that our brave soldier lions were being led by ministerial donkeys?"

The Speaker asked me to make clear if I was saying a Minister was lying. There was only one possible answer. My head was full of the deceptions of vain ministers since 2006, the avoidable 430 deaths and 2,000 soldiers who return home broken in mind and body.

'Yes, ministers had lied' I said. Exclusion was inevitable and a price worth paying.

 

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Something was certain to blow. It's been seven days of hot churning emotion that led to my expulsion from the Commons for the first time in 25 years. Last Thursday, Minister Justine Greening demeane...
Something was certain to blow. It's been seven days of hot churning emotion that led to my expulsion from the Commons for the first time in 25 years. Last Thursday, Minister Justine Greening demeane...
 
 
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06:35 PM on 09/22/2012
The reasons we're there are to keep profit margins in the stratosphere for arms traders and dealers nothing else, well, maybe the backhanders to cabinet ministers too, for ten years we've waged war on countries for no other reason but profits/oil/control and most sensible people in the UK know they're lied to by parliament on a daily basis, we all want our troops out, they are not mercenaries to be used by unscrupulous politicians for their own gain or status. Congratulations to you for speaking out, its well past time your colleagues put aside their personal greed and voted on behalf of the people your supposed to serve rather than the interests of big business, however profitable its not worth one soldiers life.
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Alan Bowman
ACIB and Author
11:15 AM on 09/20/2012
Wasn't this the War that no shots would be fired in and all would be easy peasy when we went into Afghanistan.??

Well said Paul Flynn, as has happened so many times in the last decade plus Blair, Ministers, PR Gurus et al will be economical with the truth whenever it suits there plans and put all of us at risk either on the frontline as our Armed Forces are or in the UK with bomb attacks.

We have poked the Hornets Nest in many areas and in many ways since the Iraq War and when we withdraw Afgahnistan will revert back to its old ways as we are trying to change a feudal and tribal system of a passionate people who do not want us in their country.